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Mission Critical: Will a Trump card win China's rare earths?
The first American President visit to China since 2017 has an uncomfortable subtext. Washington is now negotiating for access to minerals it has spent a year and billions of dollars trying not to need. Azzet’s Mission Critical is a weekly column that lays out the ebbs and flows around critical minerals supply chains - from pricing, production, refinement and mergers & acquisitions, to manufacturing and consumer products. President Trump landed in Beijing yesterday for a meeting that, whatever the communiqué language says on Friday, is fundamentally a negotiation over materials China controls and the rest of the world does not. Rare earths - the 17 metallic elements underpinning F-35 fighter jets, EV motors, and the magnets inside every offshore wind turbine - are confirmed on the summit agenda alongside Taiwan, Iran's disruption to global oil supply, and the chip access dispute that has run hot since Washington tightened technology transfer rules against Huawei in late 2025. Beijing set the tone before Air Force One touched down, publishing a new rare earth enforcement framework two weeks before the summit that introduces administrative penalties - including licence revocation - for Chinese producers who breach product
Mining
Mission Critical: A US$5bn gamble on two geopolitical bets
Canberra and Washington have pledged more than US$5 billion to critical minerals projects in Australia this week, ahead of the 20 April six-month milestone under their October framework. Named priority recipients include Tronox, Ardea Resources, Arafura and Alcoa-Sojitz, backed by Export Finance Australia and the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Catch is, the framework's forward economics depend on two geopolitical deadlines, and neither is locked in. Beijing has to keep its rare earth export controls suspended past November, while Trump needs a price floor deal signed before the 13 July cutoff.Where the capital is headingMinister for Resources Madeleine King and US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum confirmed priority projects under the bilateral framework on 13 April. The biggest single cheque landed with Tronox (NYSE: TROX), which picked up coordinated letters of support worth around US$849 million for a new Western Australian rare earths refinery. Close behind, Ardea Resources (ASX: ARL) drew roughly A$1 billion of combined backing for its Kalgoorlie nickel-cobalt project - the largest nickel-cobalt resource in Australia. Arafura Rare Earths (ASX: ARU) held onto its marquee position, with the Nolans project remai
Mining
Lynas Q3 revenue increases 115%, flags strong demand
Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths (ASX: LYC) reported a more than two-fold rise in third-quarter revenue on Tuesday, driven by stronger prices and robust demand as customers look to reduce reliance on Chinese supply. The company posted gross sales revenue of A$265 million for the quarter ended 31 March, up 115% from $123 million in the prior corresponding period (pcp). The result marks Lynas’ strongest quarterly revenue since the final quarter of fiscal 2022, driven by improved pricing and a more favourable product mix. As the largest producer of rare earths outside China, Lynas said market conditions remain supportive, highlighting growing customer demand for diversified supply chains amid ongoing geopolitical tensions. The company noted a “renewed and urgent focus by customers on securing sustainable, outside China supply chains due to ongoing disruptions to previous supply chains”. The rare earths sector has gained renewed attention over the past year, particularly following strategic moves by the United States to secure the supply of critical materials used in advanced technologies. Neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr), a key component in high-performance magnets, remains central to this demand, with applications spanni
Mining
USA Rare Earth’s $2.8bn magnet chain bet
USA Rare Earth has agreed to acquire Brazilian miner Serra Verde in a transaction valued at US$2.8 billion, including ~$300 million in cash and $126.9 million in newly issued stock, and is backed by the United States Government. Serra Verde owns the Pela Ema mine and processing plant in Goiás, Brazil - the only producer outside Asia capable of supplying all four magnetic rare earths at scale, including the heavy elements dysprosium, terbium and yttrium. The operation entered commercial production in early 2024 and is targeting output of 6,500 tonnes of rare earth oxides per year by the end of 2027, across a 25-year mine life. That output is expected to represent more than half of all non-China heavy rare earth supply globally by 2027. The privately-owned miner also secured a $565 million financing package from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to fund optimisation and expansion through to positive cash flow. The mine carries a 15-year offtake agreement with a special-purpose vehicle capitalised by U.S. government agencies and private capital sources, covering 100% of Phase I production, with guaranteed floor prices for dysprosium and terbium. Serra Verde CEO Thras Moraitis said the floor pric
Mining
Almost everyone’s a winner in mining rights court case
Australian’s wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart, has claimed victory in a long-running court case over the rights to hundreds of millions of dollars of iron ore in Western Australia that ensnared mining giant Rio Tinto and other parties. Rinehart, through her privately-owned Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd (HPPL), said the Western Australian Supreme Court decision decisively confirmed its rightful ownership of the Hope Downs and East Angelas tenements in the minerals-rich Pilbara region. But in her judgement Justice Jennifer Smith found Hancock’s legal adversary, Wright Prospecting Pty Ltd (WPLL), had the right to 50% of past and future royalties from Hope Downs. Wright Prospecting welcomed the decision, saying it launched the action to recover its share of royalties from the Hope Downs 1-3 mines. “That claim has been upheld. WPPL also sought either a proprietary interest or a royalty in the Hope Downs 4-6 mines and has been successful in its royalty claim,” it said in a statement published by media outlets. Equally welcoming of the decision was Hancock Prospecting, with Executive Director Jay Newby saying the court firmly rejected “the baseless ownership claims” of WPPL and Rinehart’s children, John Hancock and Bianca Ri

Mining
Ex-Rio boss bets big on ocean floor mining in US$1bn deal
Former Rio Tinto chief executive Tom Albanese will merge with Nasdaq-listed Odyssey Marine Exploration through his American Ocean Minerals Corporation in a US$1 billion (A$1.417 billion) all-stock deal, creating one of the largest United States-aligned portfolios of underwater mineral deposits. Odyssey shares rocketed almost 120% on the announcement. The combined entity will target polymetallic nodules - potato-sized formations rich in nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese - across more than 500 square kilometres of prospective seabed in the Cook Islands and U.S.-licensed international waters. The transaction includes more than $150 million in institutional placement financing alongside a $75 million pre-public raise closed in February. Once complete, expected by August, the merged firm will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker AOMC. Mark Justh, a capital markets veteran from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, will serve as CEO. Citigroup and Cantor Fitzgerald - chaired by Brandon Lutnick, son of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick - arranged the placement. Reality television host Mike Rowe is among the strategic investors - something you don't read every day.Washington's subsea accelerationThe deal arrives as th
Mining
Mission Critical: BHP, Rio a step closer to a Resolution?
Resolution Copper - the Rio Tinto-BHP JV sitting on an estimated 40 billion pounds of copper beneath Arizona's Oak Flat - completed a landmark land exchange on 16 March, clearing the single biggest obstacle that has stalled the project since 2014. Catch is, the land is sacred to the San Carlos Apache, the Supreme Court is fielding a last-ditch appeal, and production remains years of permitting and US$500 million in capex away. Last Sunday, the U.S. Forest Service handed over 2,422 acres of federal land near Superior, Arizona, to Resolution Copper, completing a transfer stuck in gridlock since 2014. The development barrier stretches back more than a decade, when the late Senator John McCain attached a land-swap rider to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In return, the JV transferred more than 5,400 acres of environmentally sensitive land containing special status species and Native American cultural sites into National Forests and Conservation Areas. A Ninth Circuit ruling upheld a district court decision a week ago, denying a preliminary injunction that sought to halt the handover on environmental and cultural grounds, clearing the path for the swap to proceed. "This is a remarkable day for both Reso
Mining
BHP Americas copper czar Brandon Craig tapped as next CEO
Brandon Craig, the 25-year company veteran who runs BHP's Americas copper-heavy growth engine, will replace Mike Henry as chief executive on 1 July. BHP Group (ASX: BHP) has named Brandon Craig as its next chief executive, effective 1 July, drawing a line under Mike Henry's six-and-a-half-year tenure atop the world's largest listed miner. Craig, who has been with the company since 1999 and currently serves as President Americas, was selected through a formal board-led succession process overseen by Chairman Ross McEwan. The appointment passed over several publicly tipped candidates - including Australian operations chief Geraldine Slattery, chief financial officer Vandita Pant, and commercial head Ragnar Udd - and landed on the executive most directly responsible for BHP's copper and potash development slate. Craig ran Western Australia Iron Ore before shifting to the Americas in March 2024, where he has overseen the Escondida expansion, advanced the Vicuña copper-gold joint venture in Argentina, and steered the Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan toward its mid-2027 commissioning date. Under his leadership, the resources group lifted red metal guidance for FY2026 and FY2027, targeting around 2.5 million tonnes (t
Mining
Mission Critical: War, oil and a minerals mining cost crunch
Brent crude crossed US$108 a barrel on Monday, capping the largest weekly surge in futures trading history, after the Iran war - now in its ninth day - disrupted roughly 20% of global oil supply, closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping and sent stagflation fears rippling through every asset class on the planet. On 28 February - the day before Operation Epic Fury began - the Pentagon asked more than 1,500 companies in the Defence Industrial Base Consortium to submit proposals for projects that could mine, process or recycle 13 critical minerals, with funding of US$100 million to over $500 million per project. The list includes arsenic, bismuth, gadolinium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, nickel, samarium, tungsten, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium and zirconium - materials used in semiconductors, weapons systems and jet engines. The U.S. is reliant on imports for most of them, and China is the dominant producer of all of them. The conflict is now feeding cost inflation into every layer of the Western critical minerals development pipeline, from operating expenditure through to shipping, project capital and the cost of financing.Diesel on the balance sheetDiesel typically accounts for 20% to 40% of an open-pit mine'